


Sunlight

by thuvia ptarth (thuviaptarth)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-02-27
Updated: 2002-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:24:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thuviaptarth/pseuds/thuvia%20ptarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dream or an hour or ten minutes, and it all came down to the three seconds between the stairs and the cage, between her hand and the kid's arm already striking the blow to the heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: "Orpheus"

Wesley is shouting but she's shouting too, shouting as loud as the blood in her ears, shouting too loud to hear him, shouting and hitting and hitting, and Wesley's trying to pull her off the kid but she doesn't even bother to shake him off because it means she'd have to stop trying to

_"Angel wouldn't want you to kill him,"_ Wes shouts in her ear, and she hesitates. Wes' grip tightens on her arms, hard enough to bruise. In the sudden ringing silence, his voice is low and hard. "Angel loved him more than anything in this world. More than _anything_."

She drops the kid into a bloody heap and stands up, swaying. He stirs a little, one hand twitching halfway between a spasm and a grope for traction, and she kicks him in the ribs before she lets Wes turn her away.

"Clean him up," Wes says curtly, over his shoulder; he's got one hand on her arm still, but his other arm's come up around her waist, and he's supporting half her weight. She'd like to shove him off, but she's lightheaded and her ribs hurt where Angelus kicked her  but that doesn't make sense, that wasn't real, but her ribs still hurt  her ribs hurt, and her hands ache and the knuckles are split open, and the bite aches (she'll have a scar to match B's, who'd have thought it?), and so does the injection bruise, which should be the least of her pains, but somehow isn't. Isn't. Didn't do any good, so isn't.

Wes sits her down on her bed. Dips a folded towel in a bowl of water and begins cleaning her hands.

"He was just dust," she says numbly.

"Yes," Wesley says. He's onto disinfectant now. Bandages. Soothing and practical and not meeting her eyes, and he can't be as calm as this, he can't, not the man who looked at her fierce and desperate and said _Angelus is back,_ not the man who looked at her quiet and steady and said _That's why it had to be you._

She snatches her hands out of his grasp. "*Say* something, damnit!"

He looks up at her finally. "We're all dust in the end, Faith."

It's a lie. It's a lie and a mask and she doesn't want this, she wants the man who stabbed a girl in the shoulder to get the truth out of her, she wants the man who shouted that she was worth nothing, _nothing_, she wants

She strides to the window and slams her newly bandaged hands into the frame. It's only sun glare that makes her eyes tear. If she were crying for Angel, there'd be more tears than this.

She wants to hit him, and she wants him to hit her, because that would hurt less. Because she deserves it. Because Angel was right, she thought it was over and she thought she was done and she could die and everyone would say _Guess we got her wrong_ and she wouldn't have to try anymore. She gave up for a dream or an hour or ten minutes, whatever it was, and she gave up too much and too long. A dream or an hour or ten minutes, and it all came down to the three seconds between the stairs and the cage, between her hand and the kid's arm already striking the blow to the heart.

She keeps looking outside. Angel missed sun. You could tell. "More than anything in the world, huh."

"Yes." His hands are on her shoulders and he turns her around. Wesley's moving her around a lot lately, jail and his apartment and clubs and needles and here. Moving her like a puppet, and look at them finally getting the Watcher/Slayer thing right, getting it exactly like the Council wanted, long after the Council gave up on both of them. Guess it just goes to show.

And she can't keep up the bravado when she meets his eyes.

"Before he was kidnapped," Wesley says quietly, "I believe Connor made Angel as happy as he's ever been."

"There's a couple of girls who can say different."

Wes's smile is terrible. "Joy's a moment and over. Happiness ... changes everything. Contentment may be imperfect happiness, but it's an imperfect world. Perfect happiness can't survive here."

"Fuck happiness," she says. It startles a laugh out of him.

"Yes. Well. That's not a problem just now, is it?"

The sun's hot on her back. Angelus' doing, but Angelus was just Angel in the end. So she can credit that to him, his final good deed, and not the least of them, one more entry in the tally he kept trying to tell her not to keep. The light makes Wes's face unreadable. She wonders if he's keeping count: a tick for torture in the minus column, a check for injection with mystical hallucinogen in the plus. "So what do we do?"

"We figure out who the Beastmaster is, and then we determine what to do next, and when it's over, we mourn our losses."

"That easy?"

"It won't be easy. But it's that simple. Yes."


End file.
